Usługi w restrukturyzującym się regionie tradycyjnym – przykład konurbacji katowickiej

Abstrakt

Traditionally industrial areas, such as the Katowice conurbation, until the end of the period of the centrally planned economy, based their development on industry, especially mining and steel smelting. The social and political transformation that took place at the break of the 1980’ and 90’s vividly showed a necessity for fundamental structural changes in their economies, and sharply indicated the need for development of the service sector. After 1989, the Katowice conurbation underwent substantial transformations in services (both qualitative and quantitative), although the whole of the processes related to them was under a strong influence from the general situation in the national economy, and the situation in industry in particular. The transformations in this sector of economy both stimulated and limited and development of services, the range of which was a 12% increase of the people employed there (years 1991- 2005) and a 42% growth in the number of businesses dealing in services (years 1994-2005). The recessional nature of industry (the number of workplaces in industry has decreased by 36% since the beginning of the 1990’) brought about major changes in the economic structure of the conurbation, in which since 1999 services have played the greatest part. In 2005 as many as 59,1% of its working population were employed in this sector, as compared with 40,5% employed in industry. However, the Katowice conurbation is still characterized by comparatively low degree of service saturation (159 workers per 1000 inhabitants), which is much lower that the national average of 189 people. Considerable changes took place in the structure of services, since the growth of enterprises connected with the process of restructuring the conurbation’s economy is faster than the development of the entire sector (services rendered to manufacturers and business, especially the section of „property management and company service”), and is further enhanced by general development of civilization (IT, data collection, or services included in sector IV). The changes in the Katowice conurbation that took place after 1989 are considered to be of much greater impact than those in other similar regions, e. g., the industrial area of Ostrava-Karvina in the Czech Republic.